


Warrior

by orphan_account



Category: Tenet (2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Neil, Falling In Love, M/M, Mixed Martial Arts, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26317423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When he was six years old, his Mum and Dad told him that every human being on this planet was born with a heartsong.His Mum told him that by the age of ten, many children would wake up one day and suddenly find themselves able to sing or perform with a musical instrument. She told him that these children will spend most of their lives developing their heartsong to perfection, so that one day when they release it into the world, they would find that one person that would love them for the rest of their days.The rare ones that grow up without a Heartsong, are called the Broken. He belongs in that category.
Relationships: Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	1. I Will Not Bow

_**Now the dark begins to rise** _   
_**Save your breath, it's far from over** _   
_**Leave the lost and dead behind** _   
_**Now's your chance to run for cover** _

* * *

When he was six years old, his Mum and Dad told him that every human being on this planet was born with a heartsong.

His Mum told him that by the age of ten, many children would wake up one day and suddenly find themselves able to sing or perform with a musical instrument. She told him that these children will spend most of their lives developing their heartsong to perfection, so that one day when they release it into the world, they would find that one person that would love them for the rest of their days.

Whenever he had trouble sleeping, Mum and Dad would tuck him in between the sheets and sing a lullaby to chase away the night monsters. Mum and Dad would always regale him of the story of how they met in one fateful evening. Dad was a pianist and Mum was an opera singer. Both of them had their own idealistic spin into that romantic tale, but they recounted that moment so many times that it was burned into his memory.

By the time he turns nine, he has it all burned into his memory.

By the time his tenth birthday passes by, he wakes up for the next three-hundred and sixty-five days without feeling anything changing.

By the time he turns eleven, he breaks down. He cries rivers and streams. Mum and Dad catch him and hold him, whispering sweet comforts and loving affirmations into his ears.

By the time he turns fourteen, he discovers his passion for science and physics. Eager for a chance to escape the growing void in his chest, he throws himself so eagerly into his academic studies that he dominates his school years in secondary. He is doing so well in his studies that the school has no choice but to override the minimum age requirement for him to take his A-Levels.

By the time he is sixteen years old, he’s the youngest person in his family to attend university.

By then, he believes that he’s defective. Mum and Dad don’t say anything about it, but it shows the depth of their wisdom and love for him when they gave him worried and sad glances, as he bids them goodbye and moves into a dorm in a college in London.

In the first night he moves into his private dorm, he lets his heart break one last time as he cries and mourns. Mourns and weeps for an aborted hope that never survived the date of his birth. He lets himself break and splinter into shards, for one final time.

By the next morning, he wakes up early and looks at his haggard reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Blood trickles down his hands as the flat mirror splinters into fragile shards, leaving behind an unsightly scar in the middle, covering his face. For the first time in his life, no tears came. For the first time in his life, he feels numb.

He thinks that this is the first time he feels so keenly the hungry, pulsing void of darkness and existential pain beating in place of his human heart. He feels cold, oh so cold, to the marrows of his bones.

He really was defective. But the first time in his life, he embraces it. He huddles it close to his chest, this revelation of his, huddles it close and nurses it. It was an ugly brand, but he embraces it.

* * *

_**I don't wanna change the world  
I just wanna leave it colder  
Light the fuse and burn it up  
Take the path that leads to nowhere** _

* * *

He is pursuing his studies in physics and mathematics for the next four years of his life with a determination and a fire in his veins that he has never felt before.

He avoids crowds, never makes friends, and refuses to let anyone else get too close to him. He is always the first coming into a lecture and the first to get out. He is the outcast that always picks the solitary activities during his laboratory periods and recitations. He never goes out with anyone, and never answers the insistent knocks on his dormitory door on Friday nights. A few of them were persistent in their efforts to include him in a social circle, but he was obstinate to the bitter end. As the months of his first term tapered off, the social calls died down.

Near the end of his first term, he is now infamous for being the cold lone wolf in his course. Some of them think he’s a sociopathic creature on the verge of a homicidal breakdown, while another handful are firm of the belief that he’s not human, not with the way he always remains emotionless in front of their eyes. Most of them eventually learned to avoid him. They avoid him, as if he was the bubonic plague.

He doesn’t care, because the void in his chest only grows bigger every passing day. He becomes colder and apathy infects everything, painting his world in monotone shades of greys and nihilistic blacks.

Nothing mattered anymore.

Fall fades away and winter comes with a vengeance.

When he looks at himself for the millionth time in his bathroom mirror, he only sees the dead and hungry eyes of a wolf that should’ve died a long time ago.

The void grows deeper and wider still.

He should’ve died years ago, but the wolf he sees in those eyes refused to give in, refused to submit. He looks deep into himself and sees a dull spark that stubbornly refuses to be smothered.

 _No one will ever love us,_ the wolf inside said, _but we will survive. We will survive, because that is what we’ve always done._

Heartsongs dominated the heads of the naïve and the idealistic fools.

 _We don’t need no heartsong,_ the wolf snarled, _we’ve got fight. Fight inside us. A fire that no one will ever take away. We will never die. The rest of the world can think we’re broken, defective. Matters not. We fight or die. Simple as that._

When he takes his final exams, he crushes and dominates all of it.

The void gets larger, but so does the wolf inside. And so he feeds it everyday, hoping to get stronger.

And he does. When one of those dumb, air-headed bullies decides to prey on him with his own group of brainless henchmen, he stares coldly at them.

“You’re one of the Broken, aren’t you?” it sneered. “Born with no heartsong. No one will ever love you!”

He stares at them, cold and unshaken. He doesn’t want to know how they came across this knowledge. But he vows to hunt down whoever betrayed him to the hyenas.

They get irritated when he refused to respond to their taunts and jeers. When one of them tries to land a clumsy haymaker on his head, he lashes out by pure instinct.

Everything happens in a blur. He snarls and snaps at the hyenas that attack him, punching and pummeling them into the ground as they came at him one after another. A ferocious delight courses through his veins and for the first time in years, he feels remarkably _alive_. He feels so alive. When the red haze clears from his head, he looks at the fear embedded in their eyes, and looks at the surprised horror etched on their bruised faces.

For the first time in his life, _he is alive_.

He looks at them, and _grins_ like the mad wolf growing inside his head.

The hyenas turn tail and run, scampering back into their grounds.

* * *

_**I will not bow  
I will not break  
I will shut the world away** _

* * *

A week after exams, he finds out that Mum died from an aneurysm.

He sits numbly on his bed, in his dorm, as he listens to Dad cry over the mobile. Dad cries and wails and it _breaks_ what little remains of his heart. He might be a Broken, but he knows the soul-wrenching pain of losing a heartsong mate.

He _feels_ and _knows_ the agony pillaging his Dad’s inner peace.

He is _not heartless_. Even the wolf inside him agrees and howls in pain as it mourns a member of its pack.

That night, he feels reckless and goes into a pub. He gets himself drunk on vodka tonic, but the wolf inside was simmering with a rage, an unholy rage against a world that continued taking and taking from him. The wolf inside is prowling back and forth, growling and snarling at a world that continues to take and kill the lives of his pack.

When a pair of drunk boys start feeling him up when they think he’s let his guard down, he turns around viciously and throws his weight against them. He tears them down with the violence of his fists and throws them aside with his knees and elbows. Within a few minutes of his drunken haze and rage, the bouncers grab him around the arms and shoulders and toss him out on the streets, right into the dead of winter.

He turns around and _screeches_ at them. They don’t hear him anyways because they’ve already locked up the doors from him. He stands there outside, panting and wheezing for breath.

He looks up when he sees an older man leaving the pub, eyeing him with interest. He knows that look in the man’s eyes.

 _He saw us,_ the wolf inside growled, _saw what we really were. But he isn’t like them. Not like those hyenas. No, he ain’t like them._

“One hell of a scene you made there,” the older gentleman said, heavily accented, in a casual manner as he walked up to him. “You disarmed them before they even knew what happened.”

“I don’t like rapists,” he snarled at the man, still panting for breath.

“No, you clearly don’t. You also hate bullies, no?” the broad-shouldered man said, a shrewd look appearing on his face. “I’ve never seen someone fight like you.”

“What’s it to you?” he snarled again, taking a few steps back.

“I need a fighter. And you look like you can handle yourself in a scuffle,” the man said in that heavily accented voice.

He stayed quiet, warily glaring at the older man.

“You’re infamous, did you know? You’re a Broken. One of the rare few in this harsh world that was unlucky enough to be born outside the cracks,” the man continued mercilessly. But this brand of cruelty was straightforward, and in a way, it was refreshing. “No heartsongs for the like of us. You see, I’m like you. And I understand your anger, your _rage_. I’ve seen that same look in your eyes in my own. I’ve asked myself the same questions once, over and over, when I was your age. Why me? Why did the universe declare me unfit to be loved by someone?”

 _He knows us,_ the wolf inside growled again, _he understands us._

“Many don’t understand us. Few try to. And even fewer succeed,” the man said gently. “But who said you needed a heartsong to live in this world? Who said you are worth less than someone with a heartsong? No one has to decide that for you.”

He scowls and growls. “Stay away from me.”

“Like I said, I need a fighter,” the man continued, unperturbed. “If you decide to wake up one day and feel that there is more purpose for your life, come back here next week. Same time.”

He watches as the older man turns around.

“You might not have Heartsong. But you _do_ have a gift. And I think we both know what that is,” the older man called over his shoulder. “If you want to feel alive again, you know where to find me.”

* * *

_**I will not fall  
I will not fade  
I will take your breath away** _

* * *

Next week, he comes back and shows up to the same pub. The same bouncers that threw him out on the streets like a rabid dog, now refuse to meet his eyes when the same older man welcomes him back into his space. He follows the man into the back and into a flight of stairs that lead to a basement.

When he arrives, he sees an octagon ring in the center of the space. Numerous heavybags lined up one full section of the wall to his right, training mats were set up in the middle, and threadmills and weight racks occupied the rest of the wall on the left side. Trainers and fighters of all sorts were engaged in their own activities and goals. Some of them were looking at him, and he stared back at them. A few of them huffed and continued working on their sets and drills, ignoring him now.

 _We are no longer the alpha,_ the wolf inside growls.

The man turns around and looks at him with a critical eye. “This is where I grow my fighters. I’m Sator. I pay good money for you to fight for me. I think you will fit in perfectly here.”

 _Not a place for rabbits and hyenas,_ the wolf inside sniffs around the place, _safe here._

“All of my fighters are Broken, just like you. I train them to be fighters, train them to take control of their lives and hearts. They go out to the world, and prove the rest of them wrong,” Sator continued in that deceptively soft voice that belied command and authority. “They win most of the time. Win or lose, don’t matter to me. All of them are very good at what they do. But you are the first I’ve seen with a gift for fighting.”

“I don’t need money, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says quietly.

“No, but you have a fire that grows inside of you, yes? A fire that grows and grows,” Sator continued, gazing at him with the clinical detachment of a surgeon. “I know that fire. I’ve seen it in myself. It will grow until it consumes everything. And believe me, it will consume everything you love. Unless you do something to quench that hunger.”

“Just like it consumed yours?” he snapped back.

“Yes,” Sator replied, eerily calm. “I was bitter against the world. I did not see the consequences of my actions, until my very own rage consumed my Kat and Max. Because of my rage, I killed them with my bare hands. And now I must live with that sin for the rest of my days until I die.”

 _He killed his pack,_ the wolf inside raged and snarled, _we can’t trust him. We can’t trust him to teach us the way of the Claw and Fang._

“I see the distrust in your eyes. My own tiger once said the same things against me, condemned me for my actions. But now, she found peace, and we rarely argue,” Sator said gently. “I do not claim to know the way. But I can show you the way I overcame my rage. That is the least I can do for you. For this world.”

 _We can’t trust him_ , the wolf snarled again, _we swore to never trust anyone again._

 _I’m sorry, but even if we don’t trust him, our father needs us,_ he tells the wolf, _Father needs us. He needs his pack right now. Mother died. No one else is left to take care of Father. We need the money too, even if I lied about that._

The wolf inside snorts at him and growls, prowling away into the dark corners of his mind.

“What do you want me to do?”

Sator smiles at him. “You have a natural instinct for fighting. But you have a long way to go, young cub. I’ve seen the way you move. I would recommend you start with Muay Thai. You already have the instincts for that art. From there, I make recommendations to the trainers.”

“Are you still interested?”

He looks Sator in the eye. “Go do your worst.”

Sator grins. “Excellent.”

* * *

_**And I'll survive, paranoid** _   
_**I have lost the will to change** _   
_**And I'm not proud, cold-blooded fake** _   
_**I will shut the world away** _


	2. The Wolf

He comes in the next evening and works the heavy bags for the first two hours, while the rest of his time there is spent one-on-one with one of the trainers. Every now and then, he feels the scrutinizing eyes of the other fighters on him, but a part of himself is relieved that they mostly leave him alone. It almost feels like he was being subconsciously sized up by everyone in the gym, and he doesn’t know whether to laugh at them or snap at them.

Thankfully, the trainer that chose to train him wasn’t very intrusive. She was very cordial and friendly, if he dared to even say it, but she never pushed him or made efforts to engage him much in social conversations beyond what’s needed to assist in training. She has several belts under her name for a middleweight, but that wasn’t as surprising.

What was surprising was the fact that she had a Heartsong. She had one, and yet, she was now engaged to a Broken. Someone like him, like Sator, the ones often vilified by society for not having a heartsong of their own. His trainer willingly chose to be engaged with a Broken.

After a few rounds of drilling roundhouse kicks with the thai pads, he looks at her warily and decided to put up the courage to ask her directly.

“Why did you choose a Broken to get engaged to?” he asked her, somewhat defensively if he was honest about the tone of his voice.

She looks at him with a calculating look, which was surprisingly out of character for her. “Is there something wrong with that?”

He tilts his head. “You have a Heartsong. You could’ve met your mate.”

Then, she smiles. “True, I have a Heartsong. But I didn’t choose to be born with one, in the same way that my fiancé didn’t choose to be born without one.”

“So, why did you?” he challenged back. “Choose them.”

“I love him,” she said softly, but in that direct manner, as if it was a simple fact of the world. “I fell in love with him, simple as that. I _choose_ to love him, and I wouldn’t take any other man in the world, even if they had a Heartsong. My fiancé is the best and most loving man I have ever met. He loves me for who I am, not for what I have. In the very same way that I love him for who he is, and not for what he doesn’t have.”

The wolf inside him snorts at this, _Love is for the weak. Don’t need no love to survive._

“How can you love someone without a Heartsong?” he snapped. “People hate us. They don’t even try to understand us. Society _hates_ us. We’re always the villains in the movies and telly shows. It’s like we’re second-class to _them_.”

She goes quiet for a moment and looks at him. He thinks she looks at him sadly, and the wolf inside him turns heel and snaps, feeling as betrayed and patronized as he is.

“You think I don’t know your pain?” she smiled, sadly. “I once heard the very same thing from my fiancé. Back when we were still dating. He would always ask me the same question. Why do I love him, someone like him? The answer is pretty simple, I think. I love him and he loves me. I didn’t choose to have a heartsong, and yet, I fell in love with him anyways. He was a Broken, just like you, just like the others here. And yet, he found his own way to love.”

She puts away the training pads. “You don’t choose who you fall in love with. It just happens. Even my own family questioned me. But I didn’t care, because love will happen to you at its own time. It’s not something you can just rush,” she said gently, “You’re not broken or defective. I know you don’t believe that yet. But someday, I just hope you find your peace, in whatever form it takes.”

She sits down beside him on the training mats. “Despite what you believe,” she turns to smile him, “You don’t need a Heartsong to find love. You just need to find someone to love you in the ways you deserve to be loved. All you need to find love, is to just find someone who loves you for _you_.”

He looks away from her. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It is deceptively simple,” she agreed, “But, perhaps it doesn’t have to be so complicated. It’s just society that likes to complicate things. With all these idealized romance novels, telly shows and movies. Maybe it’s just society pushing an unnatural take on this.”

He snorts. “Well, it’s way of the world.”

“And you think you can’t change the world?” she challenged. “Bit too late for that, ain’t it? We change the world from the time we were born. Who’s to say you’re not changing your world?”

“I don’t care about changing the world,” he said quietly, “I just care about surviving in it.”

She smiles at him. “You’re young yet. I think you might be surprised at the good things you can find in this world.”

He could feel the argument forming at the tip of his tongue, but for once in his life, he practiced self restraint.

He leaves it at that.

* * *

Hours later, he walks home from the gym. When he hears sounds of a nearby scuffle, followed by a strangled yell, his body reacts before he can process whatever was happening. His feet thundered across the pavement and he skids to a stop in a nearby alley, where a fight was taking place. The wolf inside him snarls and he pounces on the assailants before he realizes what he’s doing.

His fists find their faces and he hears the crack of multiple noses at once. His elbows strike home at their chests, and as he continues his furious assault, his elbows strike home again to the back of their heads and stomach. One assailant managed to grab his shoulder, but he steps back and drills his elbow to one of the assailant’s lower ribs with a heavy violence that he feels the fragile bone cracking.

He grabs one of the attackers and locks his head in a clinch. He draws on his muscle memory from training and pours his fury and rage into his knees. He pummels the assailant’s exposed ribcage with the violence of his knees, and he snarls as he hears the attacker crying out in agony.

He exhales harshly and tosses the man against the wall, knocking him out cold. He turns around and gives a spinning elbow to one of the attackers that tried to land a haymaker on his head. He continues his aggressive attack and delivers a nasty left hook to one assailant’s temples, knocking him out cold as well.

He turns to the last attacker standing, eyes open and glaring viciously. The last assailant was now hugging the alley wall, one eye swollen black, protecting a dislocated shoulder. The last attacker possessed more spirit than the last two he dealt with, and lunged for him. He snarls and sidesteps the clumsy punch for his face, delivering instead a vicious counterattack with a strong uppercut to the chin. The last assailant drops like a sack of bricks on the ground, eyes closed.

He exhales sharply, chest heaving as he tried to recover his breath. When he turns around to get a closer look at the victim, he feels his heart skipping.

He comes face to face with a handsome black man. The man’s exquisite suit was probably expensive, frayed at the edges, but other than that, the man looks like he emerged unscathed. He swallows hard and takes a step back, his heart pounding as he observes the broad-shouldered man slowly rising from his slumped position against the wall, eyes not leaving him. The man was looking at him with a guarded, but curious expression. When the man takes a step forward, he takes a step back, suddenly breathing hard.

Why did he step back?

The handsome man slowly raises his hands, in an attempt to pacify. “Take it easy there, fella. I’m not going to hurt you.”

 _American_ , the wolf inside growls. _Why would a posse target an American at this time of night?_

He swallows hard. “Stay away from the streets at night. This neighborhood isn’t friendly to tourists.”

“Hey, wait –”

He turns around and runs, away. He came too close to _something_ tonight. He hopes this is the last time he would ever feel this way. But he knows, that something _changed_. And he is lying to himself if he said that this would be the last time he ever sees that man again.

And his instincts were right.

Because the very next day, the very same man walked into one of his lectures.

In a class of more than one hundred students, the American still managed to find him.

* * *

There was once an ancient legend, once held in high regard by the early humans, but as eons passed, the story was shared less and less.

The legend went something like this: once, there was a Wolf.

In a world of love and peace, the Wolf was born without knowing love or peace. The Wolf was wild and ferocious, a thing of primitive inclinations. Where others would find a mate to love them, the Wolf was alone and isolated. The Wolf could not find love, as hard as it tried to look for it. Soon, the Wolf became bitter and rage accumulated within its heart. Eventually, the Wolf's rage grew so large that it towered over the village that raised them. On a terrible night, the Wolf ran from the forest and into the village, eyes ablaze with painful rage and internal agony.

The Wolf laid waste to the village and consumed everything in its path. Man, woman, child -- the Wolf consumed all. 

On the next morning, the Wolf awakes to the debris left behind by their rage. Overcome with remorse and guilt, the Wolf sits back and howls for the first time.

When night fell, the Wolf was gently stirred from slumber by a soft light that came from beyond the forest. The Wolf followed the trail of light beyond the forest, only to stumble into a clearing with a lake.

The Wolf sits down and looks up at the night skies. Up there, the Wolf finds the Moon. 

The Moon said, "Why did you kill them?"

The Wolf said, "I could not find a soul that loved me. Now, I carry the shame of my deed forever."

"I heard you howling your grief into the skies," the Moon said. "The Sun, my brother, sent me. The Sun felt the pain in your heart, little Wolf."

The Wolf said, "If you saw my pain, why didn't you come earlier?"

The Moon smiled sadly. "I did not know until the Sun told me. The Sun creates light, I do not. I can only see where the Sun casts his light on the land. But now, now I see you."

The Wolf said, "Surely you cannot love me. I am alone. I am a monster."

The Moon said, "If you were a monster, would you have expressed regret for your actions?"

The Wolf said, "No. But it does not change what I have done."

The Moon said, "We cannot change the past. But you can change your future."

The Wolf said, "How can I change my future when I have not known love? I am afraid of repeating the same mistake."

The Moon said, "You will know love for the rest of your life, Wolf. From now on, I will stay here in the skies. So that wherever you may go, you can always find me."

Hereafter, with every passing night, the Wolf sits and howls at the Moon.


End file.
